Two weeks after HHS Secretary Sebelius approved the controversial final rule, Speaker Boehner and Romney take up religious liberty issue.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) speaks during his weekly on-camera news conference on Capitol Hill Feb. 2 in Washington. Boehner said President Obama should reconsider a decision to compel church-affiliated employers to cover birth control in their health care plans.

– Pete Marovich/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The new health-care bill was supposed to be President Barack Obama’s ticket to his re-election. But, for now, those hopes have dimmed, as the White House fights to defend its controversial policy to require Catholic institutions to provide contraceptive services in their employee health plans.

Under President Obama’s health-care overhaul law, most private employer health benefits will have to cover birth control, free of charge, as a preventive service for women. For much of 2011, the U.S. bishops lobbied for a broad religious exemption that would shield church-affiliated hospitals, social agencies and universities from being forced to provide health services that violated...READ MORE

Another case against religious liberty. Jan. 29 issue column.

In a federal court in Seattle, the fight for religious liberty is entering a new phase.

As we have written before (“Conscience Claws,” Register, May 31, 2010), the case, called Storman’s, Inc. v. Selecky, shows in stark relief the role of the state in infringing religious liberty in favor of secular values.

Christian pharmacists are protesting a law that would require them to stock and provide “Plan B” in violation of their religious beliefs.

The state’s view is that consumer demand should drive religious accommodation; that is, that consumers’ desire to receive whatever drugs or products they would like should trump the values of those who do not wish to stock those products for...READ MORE

Professor debunks study that touts the 'benefits' of living together without marriage, taking cues from the late Pope and Christian teaching: 'Love and marriage are connected, and when you try to disconnect them, you end up with less love and bad relationships.'

A new study touting the “benefits” of cohabitation is based on deeply flawed ideas about human nature and fulfillment, according to a leading scholar on the social role of families.

“It’s garbage in, garbage out,” said Scott Yenor, the Boise State University political science professor whose book Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought (Baylor University Press, 2011) surveys changing ideas about society’s fundamental institution.

CNA spoke with Yenor about a paper published in the February 2012 installment of the Journal of Marriage and Family, entitled “Re-Examining the Case for Marriage: Union Formation and Changes in Well-Being.”

Saturday book pick: A former secretary’s memoirs focus on the personal, day-to-day life of the papal apartment.

Think of Pope John Paul II’s secretary, and Stanisław Dziwisz springs to mind. Then-Father Dziwisz was Cardinal Wojtyla’s secretary since 1966; he served him until the day he died — and is now his successor as archbishop of Krakow.

But over the course of his quarter-century pontificate, John Paul also had other assistant secretaries. One of them was Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki, now archbishop of the ecumenically sensitive see of Lviv, Ukraine. These are his memoirs, in interview format.

If Cardinal Dziwisz takes the more macro picture of the historical importance of Wojtyla’s pontificate, Archbishop Mokrzycki focuses more on the personal, day-to-day life of the papal apartment. He speaks about...READ MORE

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) speaks during a press conference at a Planned Parenthood Clinic Feb. 3, in Seattle. Murray commended the Susan G. Komen Foundation's reversal of a decision to not fund breast exams at Planned Parenthood.

– Stephen Brashear/Getty Images

Pro-lifers were shocked today as the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure of Breast Cancer, perhaps the world’s leading cancer-advocacy group for women, announced that it is backtracking on an earlier decision to halt funding to abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

They are going to honor current grants to Planned Parenthood and suspend future funding pending the outcome of a congressional investigation of the abortion and contraceptive provider.

The National Right to Life Committee charged in a statement that Komen is “succumbing to pressure from the mainstream media and Planned Parenthood” and noted that Planned Parenthood performs approximately 27% of the abortions done yearly in...READ MORE

“I stand with the Catholic bishops and all religious organizations in their strenuous objection to this liberty- and conscience-stifling regulation,” Romney wrote in a Feb. 3 Washington Examiner column titled “President Obama vs. Religious Liberty.”

If elected president, the former Massachusetts governor said, he would eliminate the mandate “on day one.”

“Such rules don’t belong in the America that I believe in.”

The mandate, announced on Jan. 20, requires employers to provide insurance coverage for FDA-approved sterilization procedures...READ MORE